


shattered like a mirror

by sky_of_starflowers



Series: to the ones that didn't last the night [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Irondad, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), but a little canon compliant too, the canon divergence is only for the end of the movie, the major character death is skirted around and it's in the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 11:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_of_starflowers/pseuds/sky_of_starflowers
Summary: Peter coughs, which is reassuring cause that means he isn't dead. His eyelids are heavy though, and when he manages to open them, the world is fuzzy and tinged weirdly with orange. He doesn’t hurt anymore, so that’s good. He turns his head to the side slightly and that figure looks vaguely like - “Jesus?”-aka the continuation to the “ones that didn’t last the night” series that i didn’t know i was gonna write





	shattered like a mirror

**Author's Note:**

> so i actually started writing this after seeing infinity war last year. of course, it wasn't until now that i've finally finished it, which is impressive cause what i had was about two paragraphs that were absolutely zero story. to be fair, there is still very little story, but at least there's more to read

Peter coughs, which is reassuring cause that means he isn't dead. His eyelids are heavy though, and when he manages to open them, the world is fuzzy and tinged weirdly with orange. He doesn’t hurt anymore, so that’s good. He turns his head to the side slightly and that figure looks vaguely like - “Jesus?”

The Jesus figure laughs, squatting down next to Peter. “Kinda formal, but I’ll take it. Most folks usually call me Bucky.” Jesus figure offers Peter a hand up, which he is more than happy to accept.

The name sets off bells, whistles, and about a dozen alarms that sound oddly like Peter’s phone in the mornings. Despite all that, it still takes Peter a long minute to figure out who Jesus is and when he does, he’s wide-eyed because _holy shit_. “Bucky? Like, Sergeant Barnes Bucky?”

Bucky Barnes _the one that Peter kinda actually fought in Berlin and basically won against???_ grins down at Peter. “Was wondering when you’d realize who it was.” He helps Peter brush the dust off of his shoulders since Peter’s a little star struck by the fact that the Winter Soldier was standing in front of him like a normal human being and Peter should probably say something else cause right now he’s just standing there with his mouth hanging open. “You’re Queens, right? Stevie told me a little about you, not that he knew much aside from the whole spider-thing.”

Peter blinks and it’s gonna take a bit for him to adjust to the fact that he’s gonna get to know all of the Avengers as people now because he’s technically an Avenger. “Uh, yeah, hi. I’m from Queens, but my name’s Peter, Peter Parker.” He goes to shake Bucky’s hand before thinking better of it and shoving both of his hands under his armpits. For his part, Bucky just looks amused. “Wha – he, I mean, Captain America, he – he said something about me? Like he talked about me, like in a good way?” Like a normal human being, Bucky raises an eyebrow at him as if to say ‘really?’ Peter shrugs, trying to look cool. “It’s cool, I get it, not the right time. I’ll ask later.” He takes the opportunity to actually look around them for the first time, the flat orange landscape going on as far as the eye could see, dotted with dark figures as people gather into small clumps. “So, where are we, anyway?”

“The Soul Stone,” another voice says, deeper and more confident in itself. Peter and Bucky turn to find the magician guy Doctor Strange standing there. Strange looks at Bucky and holds out a hand, which Bucky cautiously shakes. “Sergeant Barnes, it’s an honor. I’m Doctor Stephen Strange.”

Peter doesn’t miss the weird look Bucky sends Strange, shaking his hand out once it’s free again. “Hi. Can’t say I’ve heard of you or this Soul Stone place.” Bucky glances around before looking at Strange again. “Something I need to be worried about?”

Strange sighs and he suddenly looks…sad? But they’re not dead, they’re all still breathing but there was also the fact that Peter was literally hurting all over before he woke up here and his vision’s going a little spotty and his heart’s racing and Peter really needs to think about something else before it _oh no not now not here_.

Peter suddenly finds himself on the ground with Bucky and Strange squatting in front of him, Strange telling Peter to follow his breathing. It’s not an immediate solution, but it’s good enough for Peter to work his way out of it several long minutes later, his entire body exhausted after the panic attack. He can’t get his heart back to the right speed yet, but Peter’s fine with working his way back to normality. “How long are we gonna be here?” Peter asks, and he hates how small he sounds when he sees the looks of pity and sympathy on Bucky and Strange’s faces.

Strange is the one who answers, and he very carefully avoids looking at either Bucky or Peter when he speaks again. “Five years, give or take. Assuming everything goes correctly,” he adds, staring at the ground as he does.

Peter’s heart sinks, and he knows he doesn’t imagine the look on Bucky’s face at the news. “Five years,” Bucky says faintly, and Peter watches him stare up at the sky. “Seventy years later, and now I’ve gotta wait five more.” Bucky sighs, and Peter reaches out to rest a hand on Bucky’s arm, squeezing a little when Bucky looks at him.

Now all they have to do is wait for five years to pass.

* * *

Carol doesn’t know what she’ll do if she shows up to the house in Louisiana and finds it empty, save for a few piles of dust. She finds herself hiding in one of the dozens of bedroom in the Avengers facility, staring out the window at the woods surrounding the property and trying not to think of what might’ve happened if Fury had called her just a little earlier.

The knock on the door startles her, and Carol has to forcibly remind herself that this isn’t a place where they would appreciate giant holes in their walls. She turns and, of everyone currently there, the sad Norse God in a dark hoodie offering up one of two bottles of whiskey wasn’t what she was expecting. “Mind if I join you?” Carol gestures to the empty space on the bed beside her, and Thor accepts. He doesn’t bound over, but he certainly doesn’t show any hesitation in coming to sit next to Carol.

Once he’s settled on the bed, Thor offers her a bottle of whiskey, and Carol’s grateful for his foresight in bringing alcohol, taking and opening it before taking a long swig. “Thanks,” she says, glancing at Thor as he stares out at the trees. There’s something he’s not saying, and Carol’s not sure she wants to hear it. She also knows she probably doesn’t have much of a choice since he came to her.

“I don’t suppose you can shapeshift?” Thor asks after he’s taken a drink of his own whiskey, smaller than her own, Carol notices, like he’s trying to make this one last. Carol shakes her head no, and she can’t help but feel like it’s the wrong answer when Thor smiles ruefully. “No, I didn’t think so.” He takes another sip of his whiskey, and Carol suddenly wants to know who it is that can break this man’s heart so.

“What’s his name?” Thor glances at her, not quite following the logic behind Carol’s question. Carol nods to his whiskey, narrowing her eyes a little. “Your shapeshifter friend, what’s his name? Maybe we’ve crossed paths before,” Carol adds, though it’s unlikely. She stayed pretty far away from Odin’s area when she was out in space – no need to invite trouble to her doorstep.

Thor stares out at the trees and takes another sip before he answers. “His name was Loki, and he was my brother.” Carol hums in response, thinking. It wouldn’t be _impossible_ per se for her and this Loki to have crossed paths, but it’s highly unlikely that it’s the same person Carol’s thinking of. Thor obviously takes her silence as a negative, so he fills the space. “Not by blood, but we grew up together and he gave his own life so that Thanos would spare mine.”

“This Loki,” Carol says, cautious of giving Thor too much hope. “He wouldn’t happen to have a fondness for stabbing people, would he?” Thor’s eyes light up, and Carol knows that she’s hit pay dirt. “I think I ran into him on the last planet I was on, Aerie. Pretty sure the locals had him arrested for looking suspicious or something like that.” As Carol keeps talking, a smile grows on Thor’s face. “Pale, black hair? Likes pulling a trick where he looks like he’s in one place with an illusion and then isn’t there?”

Thor laughs in relief, turning to face Carol completely. “Then you’ve seen him, my brother.” He shakes his head, and Carol feels the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile. “Quite the trickster. I can’t say I’m surprised that he stabbed someone again, though; usually, it’s just me he tries to stab.” Thor laughs again, and Carol’s happy for him, she is, but seeing Thor relieved just makes her nervous about flying home. It’s apparently evident because Thor gently clinks their bottles together to get her attention. “What’s her name? The one you worry has been lost with the others?” Thor’s expression is somber, and Carol suddenly remembers Natasha telling her that Thor hadn’t been able to stop Thanos right before the snap.

This is evidently just as much Thor’s self-punishment as her own, it turns out. Carol smiles sadly and looks down at her whiskey, just to avoid Thor’s eyes as she answers. “There’s Maria and Monica. Maria’s my best friend and Monica’s her daughter.” Thor nods wisely, like that’s all he needs to know, and that’s all Carol plans on saying, since Thor seems as hell-bent on torturing herself as she is.

Apparently, Thor has other plans. “These two, Maria and Monica, they’re your family?” Carol nods, her eyes suddenly wetter than they had been a few minutes ago. Thor is quiet for a long moment, before – “I watched my brother die before me three times.” It’s enough to make Carol look at Thor again, his eyes turned back toward the trees. “Each time hurt like the first and I cannot bear wondering he was truly dead or if he managed to escape again.” Thor looks at Carol again, a small smile on his face. “Thank you, for telling me that he is alive. However, you are still wondering.”

Carol shakes her head, taking a slower drink of her whiskey. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I get there and find one or, God, both of them gone. I don’t think I could take it,” she confesses quietly. “I’m afraid of what that would do to me.”

Thor reaches out and puts a warm hand over one of Carol’s. “The wondering and the fear are the worst part,” he tells her, and Carol forces herself to meet Thor’s eyes and see the age there. “Knowing is better, even if it simply fuels the need for vengeance.”

Carol smiles wryly at Thor, bringing her whiskey back up to her mouth. “Looks like I’m headed to Louisiana then.”

* * *

(Carol cries when she arrives at the house and Monica runs out to wrap her arms around her aunt. She laughs in relief when Maria follows shortly after, and the three of them hold onto each other for as long as they can in the Louisiana sun, thanking their lucky stars that they still have each other.)

* * *

Nebula is…well, surprised isn’t quite enough to cover it. Honored might be a better word, and she considers it as she knocks on the hospital door. A muffled voice calls for her to come in, and she does so without allowing herself to hesitate ( _hesitation is weakness and weakness means losing and you cannot lose not again_ ). Still, there is something untouchable about the picture Nebula finds behind the door, Pepper looking exhausted but glowing with happiness in the hospital bed and Tony standing by her side, his face lit up in a way Nebula’s never seen before. There’s something small and pink cradled in the cloth in his arms, and Nebula is struck by how much of her is metal and could destroy all of this with barely a thought.

“Nebula,” Pepper says tiredly, smiling at her where Nebula’s still standing in the doorway. “I’m so glad you could make it.” Pepper glances up at Tony, who only has eyes for the tiny miracle sleeping peacefully in his arms if Nebula’s hearing the small breaths correctly. “Tony hasn’t taken his eyes off of her since she got cleaned up and the nurses handed her back to me.”

“Before that, if you can believe it,” Tony says, quick as a blast. He finally takes his eyes off of his newborn daughter, but his arms give away where his attention lies. The smile he sends Nebula’s way is worth the worry, she thinks, even if Nebula wishes she could erase the bags under his and Pepper’s eyes, even if they were for something so good. “Glad you could make it, Smurfette.”

Nebula nods in response. “I am glad you invited me here.” Now that she’s moved closer, she can make out a little more of the chubby red face, dark eyelashes closed against impossibly round cheeks and little hands just peeking out of the fabric surrounding her. “She is…wonderful,” Nebula says with nothing short of wonder in her voice as she looks at her newest, and smallest, charge. She is loath to admit it, but she has silently taken this brave man and his family under her protection, even if they don’t know it.

Tony and Pepper let out similar laughs, and they share a look between the two of them that Nebula misses in staring at the child. “We thought it would be good for her to be introduced to her Auntie Neb as early as possible,” Tony says after another moment of silent communication with Pepper.

His words snap Nebula’s attention away from considering the far-too tiny fingers to Tony’s earnest expression and Pepper’s honest smile. “You…wish me to be a part of her life? Of her family?” She turns dark eyes from Pepper to Tony cautiously, waiting for the truth to appear, for this to have been a cruel joke.

But Tony just looks confused and Pepper like she expected this to happen. “Of course you’re part of her family,” Tony says as easy as declaring the Terran sky blue and its grasses green and her the winner of a game played on a spaceship many months ago. A weight lifts off of Nebula’s chest and liquid gathers at the bottom of her eyes at the sheer goodness of the people in front of her.

Pepper catches Nebula’s hand closest to her with one of her own, squeezing it gently when Nebula looks at her. “You’re a part of our family, Nebula. Tony’s insisted since he got back, and I can’t say I object to the idea in the first place. You’ve done so much, and this is what we can give back,” Pepper adds, just as Nebula can’t stop the tears from falling down her face. Tony looks vaguely panicked at the appearance of tears, but Pepper just keeps smiling at Nebula. “Do you want to hold her?”

Nebula stares at Pepper through the tears, at the sheer trust this woman has placed in her, offering the life of her newborn child to the hands of an assassin with more blood on her hands than she would ever care to remember. But Pepper keeps looking at Nebula with that same look of family and love and Nebula turns her eyes back to this precious child who will never want for anything. “Very much, yes,” Nebula manages to say, awkwardly holding her hands out.

The next thirty seconds consists of Tony telling her how to hold her arms to best support the baby, especially the head since the neck is so fragile. But at the end of those thirty seconds, Nebula finds herself being handed a living being, so new and so small with the whole world at her feet. There is a voice in the back of her head telling her how best to destroy it, but she shuts it out easily when the dark lashes flutter and Nebula meets a pair of small blue eyes for the first time.

For all of the terrible things she’s done in her life and the steps she’s taken to try to make up for them, Nebula doesn’t think she deserves this much good, with Pepper and Tony and this small child in her arms, but she will take whatever she can get for as long as possible, just to try to prove to them that she is who they think she is.

* * *

Peter isn’t lying when he tells Mr. Stark he doesn’t remember anything between turning to dust and waking up on Titan. He doesn’t remember what happened in the soul stone, doesn’t remember turning eighteen far away from his friends and family, doesn’t remember the countless days of waiting waiting _waiting_ for something, anything really, to happen. All of the time spent getting to know the others who were snapped, especially those who fought Thanos, was simply erased.

He can’t stop crying when the light leaves Tony’s eyes, Pepper’s arms wrapped around him and her head mirroring his by resting on his shoulder, getting his suit wet with her tears.

It’s a long time before either of them can be moved, and even then it takes a combination of the remaining Avengers, Steve being the most adamant but also the gentlest, to get them to leave Tony behind, to get them to go somewhere where they can clean up and get Peter home to May.

May thinks she’s dreaming when she opens the door to find Peter standing there, covered in dirt, eyes red and the skin around them rubbed raw. She knows it’s not a dream when she sees Pepper Potts standing beside him, looking a million times worse. It’s Peter she hugs first, going to him and wrapping  her arms around him tightly and for long minutes like if she doesn’t he’s going to disappear again, but it’s Pepper she pulls to her, resting the taller woman’s head on her shoulder and wrapping her arms around Pepper just as tightly because, well. Peter may be blood, but Pepper’s family too. Tony had made that more than clear in the years after.

Once she’s got them settled in the living room, May tells Peter a little bit about the time after. Apparently, his high school had given the remaining staff and students several months to grieve before resuming something vaguely resembling a normal schedule. It was still only a few hours, though, which meant that all of Peter’s classmates were still in high school. Peter cries again when he hears about how Ned and MJ have been spending a lot of free time with May.

Peter cries a lot that day, and he knows it’ll be a long time before he goes a full day without crying.

He promises Pepper that he’ll come and meet Morgan Stark before the funeral, and he promises that he’ll come and visit her as often as he can afterward because he knows she’s going to need it as much as he will, even if she has Rhodey and Happy.

Pepper leaves Peter in May’s capable hands, and she wonders how she’s going to break it to her daughter that her father won’t be coming home again. It seems like an impossible task, but it’ll be a little easier, she knows, because she’ll tell Morgan that she has a big brother now.

(Well, another one. She’ll have to set up a meeting between Peter and Harley. The brother should meet, after all.)

* * *

Steve sits with Bucky, the stones returned to their proper times and places and him with the man that he’s loved since before he knew what the word meant. “Peggy says hi, by the way,” Steve says out of the blue, like it’s an afterthought to a conversation they’d been having. Problem is, neither of them has said anything in the past half hour that they’ve been watching Disney’s 1950 _Cinderella_. They started with _Snow White_ after a unanimous decision that they watch the princess movies, the other relegated to the backburner for now. Still, a little out of nowhere for a Thursday afternoon, Bucky thinks.

They’re shoulder to shoulder on the couch in their apartment in Brooklyn, mice singing onscreen while they build Cinderella’s dress, and Bucky has no idea what to say in response. “I would say hi back but there’s a good chance the message wouldn’t reach her,” Bucky says for lack of anything else to say, and Steve laughs. The consequences of Steve’s statement are slow in coming, but Bucky gets there eventually. “So you went to see her? And told her what happens?”

Steve shrugs one shoulder. “A little. Mainly the part about you and me making it to the twenty-first century via a lot of ice. She was happy to hear that we were still together, after all of this.”

Bucky snorts. “Like we’d be anywhere else,” he says, the thought of either one of them choosing anything else absolutely ridiculous after all that they’ve gone through together.

Steve hums in response, and Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder. They watch Cinderella thank the mice, and the world keeps on turning.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i hopped onto the "bucky as jesus" bandwagon waaaaay back when as well as the idea that they were in the soul stone the entire time. did i have to do some fussing around to make it fit with canon? yes, yes i did.
> 
> i hope you enjoyed it! any comment, critique, or kudos is welcome and appreciated! 
> 
> (p.s. thanks for sticking around while i went on accidental hiatus for a year)


End file.
